Resistance: A Novel

by Owen Sheers

  He went and sat at the table, his head in his hands. The dark wood of its surface was stained with even darker pools, worn smooth in little hollows where generations of men had placed their elbows. The table was a map of all the humanity who had lived in this house. Of all those who had nurtured food from these bare hills and sat here to eat the fruits of their labours. Men who had given to the soil, but only to take. This was the equation here, he saw that now. This was the pattern by which these farm women lived. The cycle of husbandry and farming was a simple one. Give life and take life, so there may be life once more.

  Albrecht sighed, feeling the weight of his own head in his palms. “Take him away,” he said to Alex without looking up from the table. “Get rid of him. Quietly.”

  APRIL–JUNE 1945

  Albrecht watched as Sarah dressed the orphan lamb in the flayed skin of another. Just moments before he’d observed her with equal fascination as she’d run the blade of her knife about the dead lamb’s neck, hooves, and rump, then peeled the skin from its body, drawing it over its head like a jumper.

  “You’d best bury that one,” she’d said to him as she turned the skin back the right way round, her small hands as bloodied as a butcher’s. Albrecht took the raw body, mottled with globules of fat, wearing its head like a mask, and dug a shallow grave down beside the river. When he returned Sarah was still preparing the orphan lamb, slipping its legs through those of the skin jacket. She pulled the new coat tight over its back, making sure it covered the tail where the ewe would smell to recognise her own offspring. Brushing a strand of hair from her eye and tipping back on her haunches, she inspected her work. The skin still hung loose about the lamb’s midriff.

  “I’ll need some string,” she said. “Hold it for a second, will you?”

  Albrecht knelt beside her. There was a pale pink smear of blood across her temple where she’d smoothed back her hair. He wanted to lick his finger, press it to her temple and rub the mark away, but he just took the lamb instead, holding it with both his hands, his fingers touching under its belly. He could feel its skin beneath the adopted coat, supple over the bone, its ribs, thin as twigs, and the rapid tremor of its heart beneath its ribs again. A cloud passed from over the sun and a quick tide of light slid down the valley, over the farmhouse, the two waterfalls on either side, and then across the lower field where Sarah was walking away from him towards her coat, hooked over the gatepost like the body of a hanging man. Without that coat he could make out her shape more clearly. She wore a cardigan over a blouse tied at her waist, which was narrower than he’d expected. From this distance it looked as if his hands would encompass it completely, as easily as they did the body of this lamb.

  The tide of light reached him, bringing with it a warmth that had seemed impossible all through that long winter. Such light was a rare gift in this valley, he’d come to appreciate this now. A cloud passing, or the sun rising over the Black Hill could transfigure the landscape in seconds; from a dark notch of earth and broken stone into a gilded wound, as if the mountains had been scratched and revealed to be pure gold beneath.

  The lamb moved under his hands, lithe and fragile, just hours old, its dark eyes still filling with light. If there had ever been any rhetoric of National Socialism that struck a faint note in him, Albrecht thought, then perhaps it had been this. The idealism of the simple, rural life, a celebration of the German peasantry and their values. He’d lived his life in cities and towns but this lamb, its delicate heart, the borrowed skin, the sudden sun, the waterfalls that never stopped; all of it countered the years of war behind him and made him feel whole again. It also made him feel younger, a child once more; ignorant but learning, edging his way towards a knowledge that seemed more elemental, more connected than anything he’d ever studied in the libraries of Dresden or Oxford.

  Sarah returned with a ball of string from which she cut a length to tie the skinned coat about the lamb’s stomach.

  “What if this doesn’t work?” Albrecht asked.

  “Use the dogs, I s’pose,” Sarah said, pulling the skin tight over the lamb’s rump.

  As ever, her speech was sparse, but Albrecht had come to understand that for every word spoken there were another ten shadowing it, unsaid within her. The words she did speak were like stones dropped into a well to determine its depth. Few, but resonant beyond their own sound.

  Checking the tightness of the string Sarah took the lamb from Albrecht and let it into the pen where the surrogate ewe was already grazing. Together, they leant on the top rail of the hurdle fence and watched.

  Ever since Albrecht had shown Sarah the map a month ago she’d engaged with him and the rest of the patrol more in the manner of the other women in the valley. Still infrequently, still guarded, but in a pragmatic spirit of circumstance; as fellow subjects of events and not as occupier and occupied. She’d even allowed him to visit her with the gramophone again, and play her some of Bach’s other cello suites.

  Sarah had agreed not to mention the map to the other women. At first, when she’d said this to Albrecht as they walked back from the Red Darren that day, she thought she’d still have to tell Maggie. But then she’d found she hadn’t wanted to. Maggie’s air of privileged knowledge whenever she spoke with Albrecht, her taking matters into her own hands, had irritated Sarah. She felt she had no reason to share the existence of the map with her, that somehow Maggie didn’t deserve such confidence. So she’d kept her promise to Albrecht and over the weeks it had worked upon her. There was nothing she could do about it. The shared knowledge of the map created something of an understanding between them. She felt this most when they were with others. Nothing was said, but the experience was there, shadowing them. The flakes of gold leaf, the faded towers of the cities, the once blue veins of the rivers. Albrecht’s silent witness confirmed her own. It made her feel, for the first time in months, in control of something.

  As Sarah watched the ewe and lamb, the crease between her eyebrows deepened. The winter had taken a heavy toll on the flock and she couldn’t afford to lose any more. A week after the first thaw she’d ridden up on the mountain with Maggie to see the damage. Nearly all the sheep they hadn’t got down at the start of the winter had died. Some had been so hungry they’d eaten the wool off the backs of others. They’d even found a huddle of mountain ponies frozen together, still standing in a circle, their backs to the wind. “It’s their nature as kills ’em,” Maggie had said as they’d ridden past. “Won’t ever take shelter, see? Just huddle in like this an’ wait.” The few sheep still alive stood motionless, their ragged coats hanging like wet rugs over their backs. Murders of crows floated above them, biding their time until one of them would finally drop to its knees and lie down.

  Once lambing started they’d lost even more. At first hardly any of the ewes took their lambs. They just wandered off, the afterbirth still trailing behind them. The grass was black and poached and they didn’t have the energy to suckle the bleating bundles of legs and bones struggling on the ground behind them. But gradually their strength and instinct had returned and they began to feed their offspring. Last week had seen several strong lambs born. It was still sometimes too much for the ewes, though, which is why this one was an orphan. Just moments after Sarah had pulled it free of its mother, the ewe had laid down her head and died.

  “The dogs?” Albrecht said. “How do they help?”

  “We put the dogs in with them,” Sarah said, not taking her eyes off the lamb in the pen. “The lamb’s got t’feed first, without the ewe scenting it. Then we put the dogs in.”

  The lamb tottered towards the ewe, moving awkwardly under the weight of its new skin. It let out a reedy bleat, lifting the ewe’s head from her grazing.

  “And what do they do? The dogs, I mean?”

  Sarah turned to look at Albrecht, the ghost of a smile across her lips. He’d been more like this recently. Like a boy, understanding nothing but wanting to know everything.

  “The dogs,” she said, turning back to
examine the ewe and lamb again. “They’re a threat. Ewe’s instinct is t’take the lamb, protect it.”

  “And that’s enough?”

  “Should be. Once it’s fed a bit.”

  Albrecht nodded then watched in silence with Sarah. There was that same equation again. The give and the take, protection in exchange for fear, a dead lamb skinned so this one may live. If this was always the pattern then perhaps it would apply to them too. Wasn’t the war like those dogs? Its teeth bared outside these steep hills? But then who were the orphans? The women, abandoned, or him and his men? It didn’t matter. What did was that instinct. The instinct of a ewe to protect one of its kind, the instinct that would force them, against the weight of all the years of war, to recognise their shared humanity.

  But with Sarah there was another instinct too; he knew that now. Over the past weeks they’d spoken about the men again, about Tom and the others. Early one morning, when he and Alex had come over before dawn to help with the lambing, Sarah had asked him what else he knew. They’d spoken openly, more openly than they ever had before, as if those hours prior to daylight were not yet the day itself, and so neutral territory. He’d told her about the bunker outside Oxford, describing in detail its construction and supplies, hoping this would make her feel better about her husband’s possible situation. She’d nodded as he spoke, as if he were confirming what she’d already seen for herself. He didn’t mention the men who’d occupied that bunker he stood in, the men he’d seen marched out onto that village green, and she hadn’t asked.

  He wanted to tell her she was holding on to nothing. That her husband and the others were probably dead before the patrol even entered the valley. Badly designed air vents, faulty explosives, a mis-set timer, tracker dogs, the Gestapo, the SS, informers, that unending winter: any of these could have killed them by now. But he remained silent and hoped instead events beyond the valley would do his talking for him.

  The old woman’s wireless was, once again, picking up news broadcasts. The original home frequencies had been reactivated by the new administration. It was clear, however, that although the announcer’s voice was unerringly English, this was no longer the pre-invasion BBC. As such, the messenger was as eloquent an illustration of how the world had moved on as the message itself.

  In America, Roosevelt had lost the November elections to an increasingly isolationist Republican Party. The new president, Dewey, had, like millions of Americans in the face of the Allies’ failures and losses in Europe, reverted to his 1940 views. Roosevelt, he told the American people, had led the United States into a war that was not hers to fight; a European war of imperialism in which not one American boy should have died. Following Japan’s act of aggression, America would still secure her rights and safety in the Pacific and along her Pacific coast, but with words as well as weapons; with diplomacy not deaths. More bloodshed was not the way forward. In keeping with this approach, negotiations with Berlin would begin immediately. Any active American units still fighting in Europe would be ordered to withdraw. Roosevelt’s sabre-rattling and the refusal of his War Department to warn the commanders of Pearl Harbor, despite their ability to read the Japanese diplomatic codes, had led to the Japanese attack that had in turn led America into war. Now it was time for Dewey to lead her into peace.

  Closer to home Butler’s government in Harrogate had begun the first steps towards rebuilding a shattered Britain. The first British prisoners of war were released from German camps, having signed agreements of nonaggression towards their new rulers. New semi-military home organisations had been established to “put Britain back on her feet.” Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris of Bomber Command had been taken to Berlin to stand trial for war crimes against the German Reich.

  The country, however, although occupied and no longer officially at war, was still far from settled. The wireless also carried reports of the ongoing “insurgency” in the north and west and even broadcast a blustering speech made by an ailing Churchill in Canada. Albrecht couldn’t tell if these reports were true or whether they were German propaganda, the necessary friction required by the administration to justify their actions. In the end, he realised this didn’t matter either. Fact or fiction, these reports were still enough. Enough for the women to want to keep their missing husbands a secret and for him and his men to want to remain out of those teeth of the war.

  The lamb reached the ewe and began butting its head in the crook of her hind leg. The ewe, in response, bent to smell the lamb’s back. She lingered over the skin, scenting the dried remains of her own amniotic fluid. The lamb, shaky on its legs, kept up its jutting motion under her stomach. The ewe sniffed once more about its tail, then lifted her head and walked away to graze again.

  Sarah let out a heavy sigh. “She’s rejected it,” she said, shaking her head. “Even with the bloody skin on, she didn’t take it.”

  The lamb, bleating thinly and shaking its tail, followed the ewe, but when it reached her she walked away again, oblivious to its cries, as if she were alone in the pen.

  April 12th

  Mary sent Bethan away today. Over to Hay to her cousins. She doesn’t even know if they are still there. She gave Bethan a note and a packed lunch and that was it. I saw them walk past on the old track this morning, then later Mary walked back on her own. Mary swears Bethan won’t say anything. Maggie was set against it but Mary was having nothing of that. She was sure Bethan shouldn’t stay here any longer.

  Two more this morning. One black, one white. Good strong ones, up on their legs straight away. Still some weak ones coming through, though. The crows find them before I do. They even took the tongue of one. It was still alive.

  Maggie had a pair of twins joined at the head and back. That shook her up bad. She broke one up to get the other one out but it was no good. She lost them both and the ewe too. She says she’s never known it before.

  I come out yesterday and saw The Gaer bright as anything. Edith has done her whitewash new. Can you believe that? After all these years.

  Still no one come into the valley. I don’t know why they don’t. They must see our smoke. But they still stay away. Maggie says it’s best that way for now. Until we know for sure what’s going to happen.

  I don’t know if you can see the hawthorn where you are, Tom, but it’s come out full here again. Even some pink down by the river. Bluebells coming through early in the wood too. There’s a woodpecker in there somewhere. I haven’t seen him yet but I hear him every day.

  I put that orphan in with the dogs but she still didn’t take it so he’s here now with me, wrapped in your shirt by the fire. I never thought I’d be doing this without you, Tom.

  I hope you are safe.

  Sarah

  Sarah found the writing easier now, the words running smoother to the pen, but her letters still weren’t complete. They still didn’t translate the days she lived. Like the poet’s watercolours they were representations but untruthful. She didn’t tell Tom everything; no longer because she couldn’t, but because she didn’t want to.

  Just as their husbands were absent from the valley, so the German patrol had become absent from her letters in the back of the accounts book. They were there, but unseen, shadowing every event. It was Otto who had whitewashed The Gaer in preparation for Edith’s return. It was Sebald who had broken up Maggie’s conjoined lambs. It was Albrecht who’d found the weak newborn with its tongue torn out at the root by the crows. It was Bethan’s responses to the attentions of Gernot that had persuaded Mary her daughter should leave the valley, and it was as much Albrecht as Maggie who’d been so concerned by her leaving.

  Sarah had tried writing her days as they were, but it was no use. Her pen hung over the page and the words blocked in her mind. If Tom were here, she could explain it all. How it was just the way of things. How there was nothing to worry about. How without the help of the patrol they’d all have sunk under the weight of the winter.

  But Tom was not here, so instead she told him about her day
s as if the Germans didn’t exist. It left her feeling unfaithful, to him and to herself, but she’d rather this than not write to him at all. Rather some words than none. Because anything was better than silence. She understood that now. Anything was better than the silence of the mute hills, the creaking quiet of her bed, the still hours before dawn. Any contact, any words written to him and him alone, even if they were hollow and echoed with the silence of all the words unwritten behind them.

  They had kissed only once. No more than a brushing of lips, as light as swallows’ wings nicking the water’s surface when they dipped to drink. Even as he leant in towards her, she’d already been pulling away from him, shaking her head. But she must have paused, just for a second, because their lips did meet. And when they did it had felt so right, more right than anything he’d done since he left home a year ago. But now Bethan was gone. Her mother had sent her away. For what? A brushing of lips, a moment of shared breath, nothing more.

  Gernot had first seen Bethan watching them over the winter. The thick snow on the hillside behind The Court seemed to absorb some of the light during the day and release it again through the evening and night. At least, this was how it had appeared when he’d looked out of his bedroom window at dusk that evening. The snow, faintly luminescent, showed up the darker outlines above it. The posts of a fence, the wind-withered thorn trees, and there, behind one of them, the shape of a young girl crouching at its trunk looking down at them. Gernot had not yet lit the lamp in his room so he was able to stand there, at a little distance from the window, and watch Bethan as she watched them. He didn’t move until she did, and even then, when he went downstairs to prepare the patrol’s dinner, he didn’t tell any of the others of what he’d seen. How the hillside had briefly birthed a dark-haired girl, a wood spirit who was watching over them.